Tuesday, April 27, 2010

MIDDLETOWN - Over the incessant barking of half a dozen small dogs, Sgt. Steve Ream couldn't believe what he saw inside a Beech Street house.

On a bed with the dogs was a woman, with "one large white parrot... standing on her forehead, biting her in the face. There was another smaller bird on her chest."

This was in addition to as many as 10 cages with other birds, all of them squawking and causing the dogs to bark. The woman appeared to be so intoxicated, Ream said, "that she could not remove the bird off her face."

The Friday night run started as a domestic disturbance, a man and a wife who had been drinking and arguing so loudly that neighbors had gotten involved.

Ream then took Janice McCoy-Nuttle, 49, to the front porch, because "I couldn't understand what she was trying to say due to the dogs barking and other noise."

She denied that her husband, Kevin Nuttle, who was outside the house with a bleeding ear, had been assaulted.

It would have ended there, Ream wrote in his report, but McCoy-Nuttle got angry at her husband, swore at him and threw an inhaler at him, nearly striking the officer.

Ream then put her in the back of his cruiser, and wrote that she kicked at the windows and banged her head on the bars. At the police station, where she had to be restrained, she was charged with disorderly conduct with intoxication.

The couple had been celebrating Nuttle's return after four months on the road as a truck driver.

McCoy-Nuttle was later found guilty in Middletown Municipal Court and fined $240.